The Taming of the T.U.C.(1948)

From the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

What has happened to the trade unions, to their national platform the T.U.C., and to their political shadow the Labour Party? Where now is the trade union army that fought the general strike in 1926? In what dump have they parked their rusty weapon, the strike? Where are the Reds of yesteryear, and who are these men and women with their generous sprinkling of O.B.E.s, Knighthoods and Peerages who at Margate earned from the discerning observer of the Manchester Guardian (10/9/48) the tribute that “once again the T.U.C. has shown the moderate good sense that often seems to surprise its own leaders as much as the critics”?

How are we to account for the incontestable and remarkable fact that the workers—to whom the T.U.C. is supposed to give guidance and inspiration—got from it little but gloom, austerity, wage-freezing, and appeals to work harder; while the capitalist press and financial circles are congratulating themselves that it was a very successful congress from their point of view!

Easy answers are provided from different quarters but they are not the right answers as we shall see on examination.

New Tunes for Old

At one time it was taken for granted that Congress was a place where the Unions recorded their dissatisfaction with the effects of capitalism, made their protests about the home and foreign policies of the Government, discussed wage demands and strikes to enforce them, tried to smooth out inter-union disputes, passed well-intentioned, pious, resolutions in favour of peace and internationalism, and paid lip-service to what they assumed to be the Socialist objective of the Labour Party. Much of it was muddled and trivial but at least there was the sense of working class solidarity and of a forward-looking movement. But now the members are perplexed to find that all the old demands, good, bad and indifferent alike, are being dropped, modified or even reversed; and that all of this is being done out of deference to the Labour Government of which they expected so much and that they worked so long to raise to power. Now, strikes are looked on with disfavour and “unofficial” strikers condemned with a harshness that used to be directed only against the employers’ Wage claims have given place to a modified “wage-freezing.” The use of the Emergency Powers Act and of troops in strikes is no longer condemned since it is a Labour Government that is responsible. Non-contributory social insurance schemes were once demanded, now the workers are told that it is better for them to contribute. For years it was a cardinal principle of trade union and Labour Party programmes that there should be no taxation on the food arid other articles the workers buy, but only direct taxation like income tax arid surtax and death duties; now the opposite principle is preached and practised. Conscription, in peace time was always condemned, now it is accepted without protest. The list of abandoned claims could be greatly extended but it will suffice to look more closely at one of them.

Re-enter the Profit Motive

At one time it was argued that higher wages could come out of profit, and the leaders urged the rank and file to work for the abolition of the profit motive and look instead towards the principle of service to the whole community. This year the whole theory was thrown overboard. Sir Stafford Cripps, erstwhile denouncer of profit, addressed the delegates on the need for greater production and for the voluntary abstention from claims for higher wages. He backed up his case with the seemingly unanswerable argument that “even if corporation profits were reduced by a quarter – a very drastic cut – it would mean an average addition to wages and salaries of not more than 4d. in the pound.” (Manchester Guardian, 8/9/48.) Sir George Chester, speaking for the T.U.C. General Council in opposition to a resolution demanding statutory control of profits and dividends, dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s of Cripps’ statement by informing the perplexed delegates that you can’t do without profit —” Profit in the form of marginal surpluses was essential to the conduct of industry whether it be nationalised or in private hands, it is inescapable until we can alter the whole structure of industry and replace profit by some other incentive.” (Daily Herald, 10/9/48.) No wonder that the Financial Times, organ of the investors, drew substantial comfort from the ‘week’s proceedings. “Margate,” wrote the Financial Times Labour Correspondent (11/9/48) “has cleared the air. In future it is going to he much more difficult for attacks on profits or the profit motive – either particular or general – to be sustained. The hitherto despised ‘capitalist’ incentive has at last been officially recognised as – at least for the time being – socially necessary.”

Explanations that do not Explain

One plausible but fallacious explanation of the change in the trade unions is the Communist one, that the leaders have been corrupted or have sold out to American capitalism and that what is wanted is new leaders, Communist ones. Neither at present nor in the past have Communist leaders produced any better results than the others. Where they differ is only in the fact that their guiding principle is unscrupulous or misguided subservience to the policies of the Russian State Capitalist regime. True the Communists have sometimes been associated with sound action by the trade union rank and file, but only by accident and because at the moment it happened to serve some aim of Russian foreign policy, never by consistent loyalty to the interests of the working class.

A somewhat similar explanation is that the trade union and labour leaders have been sobered and undermined by office and responsibility and have, in consequence, imbibed new ideas in place of the old. Some who say this think the change is good because the new ideas are better, others think them worse; but the explanation is only a half-truth. Men who have both the will and the power to put their beliefs into practice do not become “sobered ” and “undermined” by the responsibilities of office. Capitalist office does not soften the capitalist convictions of a Winston Churchill. With the Labour leaders the position is different. They are the victims of their own wrong theories and self-deception. They thought that, without any mandate to abolish capitalism, they could tame the capitalist tiger ; instead of which they are finding, as Socialists always said they would, that it is the tiger that determines the route, the pace and the policy.

The official version offered by the Labour Party and expressed by their Secretary, Mr. Morgan Phillips, in a Labour Press Service article, “Three Years that Changed Britain,” is that July 1945, when the Labour Party took office, marked the beginning of “a peaceful revolution “which made the people of Britain” for the first time in history . . . masters in their own land.” July 6th, 1945, was, he claims, the “great day” that the Socialist pioneers worked and waited for. If what he claims were true it would indeed be understandable that the tactics suitable in a struggle by the working class against the capitalist class would now become pointless and obsolete; obviously there could no longer be strikes of the workers against the capitalists if capitalism were abolished and the classes themselves had vanished. But, of course, it is only a shadow of the truth, as was shown at the T.U.C. by the speeches of Cripps and Chester referred to earlier in this article, and by other events happening before our eyes.

Is it a new Social Order?

The Capitalist Ministers who say that the old order has already passed away tell us that the reason we are prevented from reaping immediately the fruits of the “Socialist” triumph, is that Tory rule and the late war have left their aftermath of disorder and destruction that has yet to be cleared away. This is so reasonable an explanation that its inadequacy is not at first sight obvious, but the truth is that the minds and hands of the Labour Ministers are every day becoming less full with the heritage of the past war and more full with the problems and preparations for the new grouping of capitalism and the new wars that face us. The plans for Western Union and Marshall Aid are plans for a capitalist world in which capitalist Europe will try to save itself by union from being crushed between the American and Russian contestants for world dominance. It is not for the past war but for the coming war that, under Labour Government, the armed forces are greater than they were in 1938 and that for the first time in history we have peacetime conscription. During the week the T.U.C. met, the Government were considering extending compulsory military service from 12 to 18 months, and decided to delay demobilisation. The same week that saw War Minister Shinwell, author of When the Men Come Home, address Congress on the coming General Election, saw him also at Southampton seeing the Guards off to the fighting in Malaya; the troopships are once again outward bound. When Sir Stafford Cripps told Congress that production must be increased by greater output from each worker because it is not possible to increase the number of workers in production, it is capitalism, not Socialism, that demands that the hundreds of thousands of workers under arms and on munitions work shall be maintained and indeed increased. The Labour Government promised that it would bring about friendlier foreign relationships, particularly with Russia, and thus safeguard peace. The fact that the international situation goes from bad to worse is not because the Labour Government are incompetent or evilly disposed but because capitalism is in control.

Those who have eyes to see will realise that it is not the Labour Government and the T.U.C. that have changed capitalism, but capitalism under Labour rule that bids fair to change the trade union movement from an organ of working class struggle into little better than an instrument to aid the Government in the smooth running of capitalism and the campaign to get the workers to work harder and forego wage claims.

Facts for Trade Unionists

The great need in the trade union movement is for straight thinking and plain speaking. Sir Stafford Cripps and Sir George Chester are right when they say that you cannot have capitalism without profit; it is their conclusion that is wrong. Having told the workers that you cannot have the one without the other they say in effect that it is necessary now to put up with both. That is the fundamental error of the Labour Party’s theories, obvious to Socialists from the start but only now being shown up in practice in a way that all can see. The Socialist Party has always held that the working class cannot achieve power for Socialism, and cannot have Socialism in operation, until a majority have gained the understanding and will for Socialism. Without clearly seeing what they were doing the Labour Party worked on the quite different doctrine that a Labour Government lacking a mandate to establish Socialism could take capitalism in hand and administer it in accordance with Socialist principles. It cannot be done, and if seriously attempted, only chaos would be the result. As well put a pacifist in charge of the conduct of a war, or a conscientious teetotaller to build up a profitable brewery. Either the Labour Ministers had to keep their muddled good intentions and produce chaos, or they had to discard them and try to make a success of capitalism on the only principles possible, capitalist principles.

Trade unionists who are Labour Party supporters now find themselves face to face with a difficult decision. If they remain loyal to the Labour Government that is carrying on capitalism they weaken their struggle against capitalist exploitation on the industrial field and undermine their own unity, if they continue the struggle for which trade unions were formed they come into conflict with the Labour Government. It is a cruel dilemma but it has to be faced. The long years of muddled thinking have to be paid for and there is no easy way out. Backing the Government in running capitalism means stultifying the trade union movement and spreading apathy and despair; with the certainty that at the end of the road, even if the present production crisis is eased for a time, there will be new crises and new and larger wars. The alternative is the seemingly slow but in fact the only way, the way indicated by the Socialist Party at its formation, that of working for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. There are no short cuts and there is no other way.

Edgar Hardcastle

Towards an understanding of Anarchism—An Essay in irony (1948)

From the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The writer has recently undertaken an intensive study of the Anarchist philosophy, involving considerable reading and research, and now feels the time has come for him to put on paper the conclusions at which he has arrived. He does this not to parade his erudition before an admiring political world but because he believes the working class movement generally will benefit from what he has to say on this very difficult subject. Before, however, he proceeds to engrave, as it were, his ideas on the plaque of history, he wishes to give warning to the reader who may possess an intellect not immediately capable of assimilating the complex statement of the theoretical system which is to follow. It is this—do not be disheartened or downcast if at first you are unable fully to comprehend the inner meaning, or essence, or shall we say guts—for we are all workers together!—of the subject. The cost of understanding is great but the reward even greater.

It was only after many months of effort and much revisionary study that the writer was at last able to grasp the fundamental concept of anarchism, and there were times when he felt that the task was beyond him and that the labour movement would have to await the birth and maturing of a greater intellect than his. But ever before him, ever driving him on, was the consciousness of the need of the working class for someone to lay bare with crystal clarity the fundamental idea of anarchist philosophy. The acute reader will have observed that the writer has referred to fundamental “concept” and “idea” using in each case the singular noun. This he has done deliberately, for he believes the whole anarchist philosophy can be reduced, nay triumphantly acclaimed, to the single idea of trend-classification. His scientifically-inclined readers will know that perhaps the main task of science is to classify, or to use a colloquism, to sort out (this, of course, not in its aggressive sense).

What is to follow then is an attempt, the writer believes successful, to classify the main anarchist groups possessing independent trends. Further, the writer claims that an understanding of the complementary and distinguishing characteristics of these groups forms the theoretical basis of the understanding of anarchism.

At the time of writing the world anarchist movement is formed by 197 different philosophical trends or schools of thought, but the current shortage of paper prevents an analysis of all these schools, and in this article the writer will deal with a mere dozen or so. At this point another warning to the reader is necessary. Do not be misled by the similarity of names. An anarcho-communist, for instance, is not the same as a communist-anarchist. Actually they hate the sight of each other.

The main division in anarchist philosophy is that of Authoritarian and Libertarian, and it is this classification which is most used by the movement itself. It is a concept which, of course, can be extended beyond the field of politico/philosophical speculation. Mr. Barrett of Wimpole Street was, for instance, an authoritarian father, William Godwin a libertarian father.

An excellent example of this division can be found in a group in the Home Counties. This consists of eight members all of whom at one time or another have actively advocated or inclined towards every one of the 197 main philosophical trends. Half of this group are at present courting the sympathy of a group of Authoritarian Council-Communists who meet in a nearby air-raid shelter. The other half of the group achieve the adjectival distinction of libertarian by an as yet coquettish flirtation with a group of libertarian-un-Marxist-Socialists.

The groups divide on the issue of the theoretical approach to the question of poetry. The authoritarian group insisting that poetry should emphasise the communal basis of anarcho/syndicalism, revealing the social ego. The libertarian group counter this idea with an approach coming near to the Freudian id/ego/super-ego concept. Poetry they say should project the personal psyche into the social ego but should not be submerged by it. The reader will detect the libertarian emphasis on the freedom of the personality. At rock bottom then this problem of the role of the ego provides the main division in the anarchist movement.

An important group coming within, and to a certain extent sagging over the edge of the libertarian group-trend, is the philosophical-revolutionary-syndicalists. The origin of this group is somewhat obscure but is believed to have started as a breakaway movement from the egalitarian-revolutionary-syndicalists, who of course come within the authoritarian school. This group, the philosophical-revolutionary-syndicalists, pursue a tactic known as the dialectical creep, this being a process whereby the group gradually moves from one group to another pausing only to insinuate their philosophical-revolutionary-syndicalism into the concepts of the particular group in which they have settled. Their ubiquity brings upon them a certain disfavour in the movement generally and they are known as the creepers. And if the writer may be allowed a slight criticism, he feels that the efforts of this group would be more effective if its personnel were known to each other. Too often has he witnessed the tragic picture of two philosophical-revolutionary-syndicalists desperately trying to convert each other not knowing that they are of the same group.

Perhaps the least known of all anarchist groups arc the Epicurean/Federalists, the Epicurean aspect of their philosophy provides the libertarian motif, the Federalist the authoritarian. It is somewhat difficult to place, this group in a definite school since the balance between the two trends is not always maintained. Sometimes the authoritarian-element overwhelms the libertarian, and vice-versa. And whilst this is often very entertaining to its members, it is disturbing to the libertarian-council-communists and the authoritarian-council-communists, for they rely on the Epicurean/Federalists for a certain amount of ethico-politico support. The two factions never knowing which is to receive the support next.

The last group to come within the analytical purview of the writer is the Walden-wood choppers, these being the followers of that great American Anarchist, Henry David Thoreau. Briefly, they advocate a return to the woods, the ponds, and the trees. Their scorn of material comfort is legion and their annual conference (held, as a protest against bourgeois uniformity, every three years) in Epping Forest, provides a welcome sight to the jaded eyes of the brick-conditioned town-dweller.

The question of the wages system looms large in all anarchist theory, and it is precisely here that the reader can fully appreciate the liberty of ideas as expressed by the movement. Some of the groups oppose the wages system, others haven’t made up their minds, and a few just love it. It is this indifference to intellectual discipline, to theoretical unity, which cuts off the anarchist movement from all the non-emotional, materialistic concepts which constitute the basis of other social movements.

The writer recalls an incident more eloquent in its expression of the anarchist’s scorn of authoritarian agreement over principle than could be contained in a hundred books. The incident occurred after a conference convened by the South Hiding group of anti-statist/materialists to discuss the possibility of synthesising the vegetarian and anti-vivisectionalist trends which had arisen in their group. The writer met one of the attending members outside the conference hall and on enquiring as to the result of the meeting was informed that it had been a complete failure, reconciliation having been achieved.

In conclusion it remains for the writer but to express the hope that his herculean labours have not been in vain and that the worker-student will have gained some inkling and understanding of the complexities of the anarchist philosophy.

J. Lockwood

Will “The Last Hottentot” hold us back? (1948)

From the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the many problems that hinder the workers from understanding Socialism the problem of how it is possible to establish Socialism, in face of the “backwardness” of sections of the world’s population, occupies a prominent place. It really springs from the same patronising root as the complacent idea, “Of course I can understand but the poor mutt next door hasn’t the mental capacity to do so.” The strange part of it is that, lumped in with this “backward” section, are peoples responsible for many of mankind’s most brilliant achievements during the last two thousand years or so, some of which were accomplished when the people of these islands were running about unclothed and with painted bodies; of such are the Egyptian, the Arab, the Turk and the people of India and China. The place of “honour,” amongst the “backward” sections, is occupied by the negro, and yet it is just the negro who explodes the fiction of racial grades of mental capacity. Let us take one or two outstanding examples of this.

Toussaint L’Ouverture, a West African negro slave, organised the slave revolt at Haiti in 1797 and revealed himself to be one of the foremost generals of his time, defeating an army consisting of 20,000 of Napoleon’s veteran troops, expelling the French, British and Spaniards from Haiti, and inaugurating a period of peace and prosperity on the island. His “cultured” Western opponents, unable to upset the negro regime, eventually invited him on board a man-of-war for a conference, under a solemn promise of immunity, but, when they had got him on board, put him in chains, and he died in captivity.

Booker T. Washington was an American negro slave boy who had no chance of learning the simple elements of reading arid writing until he was fifteen, after the Emancipation Act of 1864, and even then he only learnt from other negroes in voluntary classes; yet he became an accomplished writer of English and a lecturer on many subjects. In the opening lines of his book “Up From Slavery” he wrote that he did not know when he was born or where, but he had a strong suspicion that he was born at some time somewhere!

Within the space of a century, in spite of the multitude of disabilities suffered by the negroes in America after the abolition of slavery, they have produced front rank workers in the fields of industry, science, art and literature. The Maoris of New Zealand, and other “backward races,” reveal similar mental capacity when they are drawn within the social orbit of modern nations. While walking along one of London’s main streets, during the early part of the year, the writer saw a group of young men and women from West Africa who were in London attending a conference. The girls, who had typical African faces, were slender, beautiful and charmingly dressed—obvious products of advanced culture, no different from their Western sisters except in colour and vivacity. Comparing them with the pictures of West African women in travel books was like comparing a chic Parisian woman with a hardworking peasant woman of the provinces. It was obvious that the social circumstances of these African girls were not those of a backward community, and it was this that made all the difference.

There is no fundamental difference in mental capacity between any sections of the world’s population; there are only differences in the quantity and diversity of the information acquired, which depends upon the particular social circumstances. Take a group of babies from anywhere on earth, even from the Hottentots and Bushmen of Africa, put them in circumstances where they can acquire the requisite knowledge and they will rival the best the West can produce in achievement in different directions. Go into any main street in a thickly populated area and you will see crowds of people, all of whom can run, jump, sing and so on. Here and there some will run better, jump better, sing belter, but all are capable of doing these things if they are physically sound. So it is with thinking. All over the world there is a general average mental capacity which, given the opportunity, can quite competently acquire modern culture—and the elements of Socialism. The opportunity lies in the existence of social conditions favourable to the development of Socialist ideas.

The full span of human life is only a tiny fraction of the span, of organic life on this planet. In the womb of time it took millions of years for the earliest organism to develop into the human organism; in the womb of its mother months are sufficient for the embryo to pass through similar phases to develop into a child. From childhood to manhood the boy or girl can absorb the achievement of his own particular section of mankind. In the advanced nations they absorb what is advanced, as the miner’s or cotton-operative’s daughter or son, who has passed through a university, has proved; in the backward nations they absorb what is suitable to the way they live, much of which is outside the mental horizon of advanced nations. A Hottentot or a Bushman, armed with his few simple tools and weapons and his bush craft, can live in the African bush; a white man can only live there if he transports modern equipment and leans on the native. Transport a Hottentot baby, just after birth, to the centre of London, rear him in a family like other London children and he will grow up like them in mental culture. Transport a London baby, just after birth, to a Hottentot family and he will grow up like them in mental culture. The Hottentot only becomes what he is today because of his primitive surroundings, and traditions associated with those surroundings. A child born anywhere on earth is born with a brain of the average capacity of mankind. How the physical and mental capacities develop afterwards depends upon social circumstances; alter the social circumstances and the mental development is different. In other words the capacity is similar but the acquirements are different. All the basic discoveries of mankind which made civilisation possible, fire, tools and weapons, pottery, metal-working, agriculture, writing and so forth, were made by sections of mankind which, according to present standards, would be regarded as backward.

What are called backward races are not backward in mental capacity; they live in circumstances that are primitive compared with the circumstances of highly developed nations. While they remain outside the orbit of modern production, or only serve it from outside, they remain tied to primitive ways and traditions. Once they become absorbed into capitalist civilisation, that is to say, once they take part in building up capitalism on their own account, then they cut the cord that ties them to the past. The negro in America has done this, Japan has done it, Russia, China and India are doing it now. Japan became a first class modern nation and Russia is on the threshold of a similar condition. Everywhere native populations are stirring restlessly, struggling to cast off the shackles of the past in order to enter into the heritage of today; and it is being accomplished at a pace that increases in speed as time passes. One nation learns from another and the backward learn from the forward, borrowing not only capitalist methods and ideas, but also the aspirations of the working class that is subjected by Capitalism. What took the Western nations centuries to accomplish the East is accomplishing in decades. The old protest, that Socialism must wait upon the intellectual development of the backward nations, is losing power as the world is being transformed into one level of development and Socialist ideas are penetrating everywhere. In the last half-century vast areas of the East and West have made tremendous strides along the capitalist road, and the rate of progress multiplies; in thirty years Russia has developed from a ramshackle semi-feudal empire into a first class world power, India is undergoing the birth-pangs of a capitalist state which will transform its primitive village economy and obliterate the traditions associated with this economy, the same may be said for Burma, as well as other of the, until recently, “backward” areas.

One thing is clear. The main resources of the world are now contained within the boundaries of nations that are either highly developed capitalistically or are on the verge of becoming so. Even the primitive agricultural communities of India will soon be overwhelmed as India gets upon its capitalist feet. There is, therefore, nothing to hold back the inhabitants of these advanced nations from uniting in a world Socialist commonwealth. In such circumstances what would be their attitude towards groups that might have lagged behind? Quite obviously it would be one of helpfulness; supplying these backward groups with everything they needed, physically and mentally, to bring them up to the general level as participants in the new world social order; and the assistance would be given free, with a generous regard for the traditions and feelings of those who had not yet cast off the cramping heritage of the past.

No, it is not “backward nations” that are clogging the footsteps of social progress but lack of understanding amongst worker’s of the “advanced nations,” and part of this lack of understanding is comprised in the patronising view that some are endowed with a mental superiority that marks them out as the chosen people. All human kind are similar parts of one mental piece, and when they get the opportunity they show that it is so.

There are no fundamental mental barriers to the acquisition of knowledge essential to the establishment of Socialism. What are apparently mental barriers are in reality social ones. These are fast disappearing as the social system that has made possible the production and safeguarding of sufficient means of existence to provide comfort for the whole of the world’s population draws all the inhabitants of the earth into its orbit.

Gilmac.

Editorial: Break-up of the Trade Union International? (1948)

Editorial from the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the incidents of the Trades Union Congress at Margate was an angry speech by Mr. Arthur Deakin denouncing the Russians for their efforts to dominate the World Federation of Trade Unions and to use it simply as a platform for Russian Government policies. It is taken to mean that the perpetual wrangling that has paralysed the W.F.T.U. since it was formed in 1945 may end in the withdrawal of the British T.U.C. along with the American C.I.O. and other non-Communist unions. This would only give organisational effect to a deep cleavage that already exists and give us two Internationals, one ostensibly representing the workers in Russia and her satellites and the other the workers in Western Europe, America and the British Dominions. “Ostensibly representing the workers” has to be used for the sake of accuracy because the W.F.T.U. and many of its affiliated bodies have moved far from the old idea of an international organisation controlled by trade unions and directly representing their vague aspirations towards international working class solidarity.

The old International Federation of Trade Unions, in the forty or more years of its chequered history, did some good work within the limits set by the political backwardness and nationalistic outlook of the affiliated unions. Disrupted by the first world war, weakened by the enforced withdrawal of Italian and German unions when those countries came under dictatorship, and for long the object of Communist enmity and attempted destruction, it nevertheless survived until in 1945 the much more ambitious plans were evolved to form a World Federation of Trade Unions to include the Russians and others not in the I.F.T.U. With all its faults and limitations the old I.F.T.U. was an organisation that consistently accepted the principle that a trade union is a voluntary independent organisation of workers, controlled by themselves, and existing for the purpose of waging the struggle of the wage-earners against the employers. Now the workers movement has moved backwards and trade unions have increasingly become organisations closely bound up with and giving expression to governmental policies. The extreme case is, of course, that of the so-called unions in Russia and Russian-controlled countries, where the idea of a trade union expressing views independent of those imposed by the Government is unthinkable ; but even where the Unions can legally be independent bodies, as in this country, it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish between the policies of union executives and those of governments.

While that condition continues a trade union International is almost superfluous, a mere duplication of governments. It was, therefore, almost inevitable that, just as the Labour Parties of Western Europe have no connection with the international Communist organisation, so the trade unions of the world would be divided according to the division of world governments.

The dissensions in the World Federation of Trade Unions have partly been concerned with Marshall Aid and partly with the question of the degree of autonomy that the International Trade Departments (i.e. the occupational internationals such as the Miners’ International, Transport Workers’ International, etc.) should retain inside the world organisation of national bodies like the Trades Union Congress, but this was only the form not the substance of the conflict. The real issue has always been whether non-Communist unions could usefully associate with government-controlled Communist bodies in Russia and elsewhere. It now seems probable that the attempt will be abandoned and the groups form rival trade union federations.

It is another reminder that internationalism is not something that can be created out of optimistically drafted paper constitutions in advance of the workers’ understanding.

Notes by the Way: The Purchasing Power of the Pound (1948)

The Notes by the Way Column from the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Purchasing Power of the Pound

At the T.U. Congress, in order to lead the delegates away from the policy of repudiating “wage-freezing” and pressing for higher wages, members of the General Council laid emphasis on the idea that lower prices would be more advantageous than higher wages. Mr. Arthur Deakin crystallised the view in the remark “I want to see £1 buy a pound’s worth of goods.” (Daily Express, 10/9/48.) Accurately speaking, the statement doesn’t mean anything, because what a £1 will buy is “a pound’s worth of goods” ; it can’t be anything else. The delegates, however, knew what he meant. It was a way of saying that he wants prices to stop rising and if possible he wants them to be reduced. Many workers think the same but what they have in mind is that they would like to see prices back to the level of 1939, or better still back to 1914, but without any fall in wages. If they kept the present level of wages and could spend them on goods at the much lower 1914 price level they would indeed have got something. It will, however, not happen, and the Government has never even suggested that they have any hope of seeing it happen. If prices came down by half, wages would soon follow, closely enough.

If the question is asked why are prices so much higher than in 1914 the greater part of the increase is easy to explain though the explanation is overlooked by many people.

In 1914, and again from 1925 to 1931, the British pound represented a certain weight of gold (113 grains of fine gold) and it was kept at that level automatically because, by law, Bank of England notes were convertible into gold or gold into notes. The American dollar also represented a fixed amount of gold, and the relationship of the weight of gold in the pound and dollar respectively was such that one pound equalled about 4.86 dollars. Now there is no convertibility of the pound into gold but, by agreement between the two governments, the pound is fixed at 4.03 dollars instead of the former 4.86 dollars. Also, since 1914, the dollar has been devalued and it too represents a smaller weight of gold than formerly; 59 per cent. of what it was in 1914.

The effect of these two changes taken together (i.e. that the dollar represents less gold, and that the pound represents fewer dollars) is that the pound now represents just under half the weight of gold it represented in 1914.

If we assumed that the value of gold itself had kept unchanged and therefore one ounce of gold would buy as much as in 1914. the effect of reducing the weight of gold represented by the Pound to one-half of what it used to be would naturally be that the pound would purchase only half as much as it did in 1914. There have been other factors also at work but by comparison with this they are of relatively small importance.

Incidentally it is worth noticing that those who believe that “we are no longer on the gold standard” are very wide of the mark.

* * *

The Russian Concentration Camps

Two exiled opponents of the Stalin Regime, Dallin and Nicolaevsky, wrote “Forced Labour in Soviet Russia,” giving a terrible picture of the conditions they allege exist in the Russian concentration camps. In our February issue we published a comment made by the Manchester Guardian in which the editor, while questioning some statements, accepted the description as convincing evidence of the inhumanity of the system of forced labour imposed on political and other prisoners. The Communists and their supporters deny the truth of the allegations. The Anglo-Russian News Bulletin (June 28th) published a review of “Forced Labour in Soviet Russia” by Mr. Rothstein, who is Lecturer on Soviet Institutions at the University of London School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Because Mr. Rothstein is presumably familiar with conditions in Russia, and able to obtain whatever information the Russian Government makes available, his review is interesting—but chiefly for what it does not say. He argues that the book contains contradictory statements and figures, that the authors are weak on arithmetic, that their estimates of the numbers in the camps could not be correct, that they make some statements “without a shred of evidence,” that they are guilty of distortions and malicious gossip and so on. The obvious intention of this line of attack is to cast such doubts on the reliability of Dallin and Nicolaevsky that the reader will conclude that he cannot believe anything they say. But before coming to any such conclusion it is necessary to notice that Mr. Rothstein stops short just at the point where he should be telling us something positive. We naturally expect him to tell us that there are no forced labour camps, or alternatively, give us some evidence that conditions in them are not inhuman. Why this silence on the part of Mr. Rothstein? Can it be that this “authority” on Soviet Institutions does not know about the institution of forced labour?

Further examination raises other doubts about Mr. Rothstein. He starts off by dismissing the whole book as being “largely a rehash of what Mr. Dallin . . . was writing in 1921, with some recent ‘documentation’ which will not stand up to serious analysis.” Later he brushes aside charges about contingents of forced labour raised since 1930 from the collective farms. Then he ridicules the idea that forced labour could have been used for the purpose of accumulating gold, on the ground that in the years 1934-1938 Russian foreign trade showed a huge favourable balance ”and therefore did not depend in the least on such accumulation.” The whole trend of Mr. Rothstein’s phrasing is to convey that at no time, from 1921 onwards, were the charges true. Unfortunately for him, those admirers of the Soviet regime, Sidney and Beatrice Webb in their “Soviet Communism” admitted and deplored the existence of concentration camps in which political prisoners, and peasants who resisted being forced into collective farms were “set to hard labour in return for a bare subsistence.” The Webbs were often eulogised by the Communists and as recently as 13th July, 1948, the Daily Worker praised their “power of objective observation and judgment” shown in another book on Russia. This is what the Webbs wrote in “Soviet Communism” (1937 edition, p.581) about one of the concentration camps :

“The miseries of a rigorous climate were aggravated by a cruel administration by brutal jailers, in which every kind of torment seems to have been employed.”

The matter was placed beyond question by the fact, as related by the Webbs, that after an outcry outside Russia, an official inquiry took place by the Russian authorities which resulted in the shooting or dismissal of many of the jailers. The camps were reorganised, but even then, said the Webbs, “the conditions, we fear, continued to be inhuman” (p.584).

So it seems that although Mr. Rothstein scoffs at the charges they were so well-founded up to 1937 that they convinced the Webbs.

About gold production Mr. Rothstein’s curious argument can be shown from official Russian figures to be entirely wrong. He argues that it cannot be true that forced labour was needed for gold production, because Russia at that time, 1934-1938, had no need of gold for foreign trade. Mr. Rothstein should tell this to the Russian Government, they would he surprised. In the Moscow publication “U.S.S.R. in Construction” (May, 1937) it is shown that gold production in Russia was rising at a stupendous rate during the years in question. Whereas in 1934 production was 157 per cent. above the 1930 level, by 1930 it had reached 340 per cent. above 1930.

So much for Mr. Rothstein. As his implied denial of the existence of forced labour camps in the years before 1937 is found to be worthless it is not unreasonable to be very suspicious about anything he says of present conditions.

* * *

What Nationalisation does for Tilling’s Shareholders

Thomas Tilling, the bus and road transport firm, with an issued capital of £4,420,000, have agreed to sell out to the Government for £25 million, and the purchase price ”will be paid in Transport stock, or cash, or partly in one form and partly in the other.” (Daily Mail, 9/9/48.)

A year ago the Company’s £1 shares were selling at 53s. 3d. When negotiations began they jumped to 75s. 3d., and when the agreement was announced they rose to nearly £6. As the City Editor of the Daily Express remarks (9/9/48), “For shareholders—State ownership with a smile.”

The Daily Herald’s City Editor (10/9/48) writes: 

“The generous purchase price of £24,800,000 offered by the Transport Commission for Tillings road transport and haulage interests started a boom in bus shares in the Stock Exchange yesterday. Prices soared to high record levels which added about £10,000,000 to market values.” 

The Daily Mail (9/9/48) still thought, however, that it was a hard bargain for the company and that the price agreed upon "is probably well below the real value.”

The company will still continue in business as it has other interests in addition to those sold to the Government.

* * *

The Law says it is preposterous

A man who took seriously the statement that under nationalisation the railways become “our” property was fined £1, with 15 guineas costs. He had refused to leave Kings Cross Station and was charged with trespassing. The magistrate said:

“The proposition that the railways are now nationalised and that any member of the public is entitled to go on their property and cannot be requested to leave is really a preposterous one and one that cannot be accepted for a moment.” Star (18/9/48).

* * *

The Lucky Tories

The following report of a speech by Mr. Cyril Osborne, Conservative M.P. for Louth, at Castle Donington on Saturday, 11th September, was published in the Star (12/9/48) :

“Fate has played a dirty trick on the Socialists. They have come to power just at the worst time; instead of being able to give everybody more the war has so impoverished us that they are compelled to force austerity down our throats. Soon they will have to enforce industrial discipline, harsher than the Tories ever dared in pre-war days. It will be bitter medicine for their supporters, but it will do them good. The Conservatives are lucky to be out of office during these days of bitter pill-taking, and the nation should be grateful to the Socialists for having provided such a willing doctor in Sir Stafford Cripps to administer such unpalatable medicine.”

Mr. Osborne here says that impoverishment due to war compelled the Labour Government, to do as they have done; but this certainly won’t prevent the Tories from trying to catch votes at the next election by laying the blame on the Labour Government and claiming that it would have been better under the Tories. We also remember that under long years of Tory Government there was always some excuse to hand to explain working class poverty and unemployment and we never remember any Tory Government that gave anything to the workers.

The truth is that capitalism run by Tories and capitalism run by the Labour Party are both unlucky for the workers.

* * *

Communist Defence of Russian Dictatorship

In the Daily Worker (24/8/48) Mr. J. R. Campbell answered a letter from a correspondent who wrote pointing out that Russia is “without democracy, without the right of criticism, ruled by a single party. You call this freedom. I call it slavery.”

In his lengthy reply Mr. Campbell does everything except meet the real criticism, which is that the Russian workers are forbidden by law to form political parties of their own choice. Unless they are members of the Communist Party they cannot belong to any political party. At elections, unless they want to vote for the candidate approved by the Communist Party, all they could do would be to vote against him; they are prevented from running opposition candidates. The membership of the Communist Party is only a very small minority of the population, and the overwhelming majority are not in a political party and cannot be.

What Mr. Campbell does is to argue as if the critics of the dictatorship are concerned solely with the right to form avowedly capitalist parties. He confines his statement to giving reasons why the workers in Russia do not need parties of the “capitalist opposition.” It may look to Mr. Campbell that this is a clever way of dodging the issue, but it only lands him in another awkward spot. The Russian Government doesn’t have to forbid the formation of capitalist parties like the Liberals and Tories unless there are in Russia people who want to form such parties. Now who would want to form capitalist parties in Russia today? and why would they want to form them? Obviously the capitalists would want to form parties of their own ; but are there capitalists in Russia? Here Mr. Campbell is in a dilemma. For the purpose of claiming that Socialism has been established in Russia he would have to maintain that there are no capitalists there; but in order to justify forbidding them to form political parties he would have to maintain that they do exist.

If he plumps for the former position and denies the existence of capitalists in Russia, then he is left to explain that it is some other groups of people who want to form capitalist parties and have to be prevented. So we have to assume that it is peasants or workers, who, knowing all the benefits of life in the Soviet paradise nevertheless want to organise Liberal or Tory capitalist parties and would do so if the law did not forbid it.

Having thus got himself into difficulties by pretending that it is only capitalist parties that are illegal in Russia perhaps Mr. Campbell will try to find time to deal with the real question which is why the workers are forcibly prevented from forming their own political parties; and how this can be squared with the claim that it is democratic.

Incidentally Mr. Campbell should take his courage in both hands and offer to tell British workers why he thinks it would be good for them, too, if they were allowed to belong to a political party only by permission of the Executive Committee of the C.P.G.B. and be thrown into concentration camps if they objected.

Edgar Hardcastle

We can’t both have it ! (1948)

From the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

SOME MAKE BIG STUFF

SOME MAKE SMALL STUFF

MORE FOR EACH—IS MORE FOR ALL

The above wording is to be seen on a large landscape poster on hoardings to-day, and is one of the propaganda efforts of His Majesty’s Third Labour Government.

This poster, like others which have preceded it, is .intended to urge the working-class to greater efforts of wealth production, as it is on the ability of the workers to produce commodities for the markets (export) in ever greater and greater volume—thus cheapening their cost—that the Labour Government and the capitalists cling to the expectation of running capitalism with a minimum of friction. The former contending this will bring full employment and prosperity to the workers and be a step towards Socialism : the latter anticipating a continuance of “business” and the ensuing profits. To paraphrase a well-known cliché: “Two minds with but a single thought. “—but both expecting a different result.

In its effort to run capitalism—masquerading under the name of Socialism—the Labour Government is committed to certain activities. One of these is the avoidance of a slump and the consequent unemployment, and because it fails to understand the motive forces of capitalism, from time to time it demonstrates its ignorance and puerility. In fact, it is capitalism that runs the Labour Government.

Unwittingly, of course, the Government publicity experts have adorned the poster with wording that is in keeping with the facts. The “stuff” that the capitalists are concerned with is profits: the workers’ “stuff” is wages. The workers’ portion of the “stuff”‘ is small. Relative to the overall increase in the amount of wealth produced the workers’ portion of the ”stuff,” coming to them in the form of wages, tends to grow smaller.

It logically follows that MORE FROM ALL means more from all of the working class : more production, more distribution, more salesmanship, more marketing—more of everything that will keep British capitalism ahead of its competitors ! In a word, more and intensified exploitation of the class that looks to the present Government to solve its problems. And the resulting increase in wealth, brought into existence as a result of increased production MEANS MORE FOR EACH member or group of the capitalist class. This is because the workers will have increased the quantity of surplus value (the source of profit), i.e., the amount of wealth they create over and above their wages and salaries.

Posters on a wall will not rescue the Labour Government from the mess they will eventually find themselves in as a result of trying to serve two masters. Neither will more production rescue the vast majority of workers from their poverty position as members of a wage-earning, property-less class.

GUY.

SPGB Meetings (1948)

Party News from the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Party News Briefs (1948)

Party News from the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrade Groves is temporarily unable to compile the Party News Briefs and until he resumes they will be carried on by the member whose signature is at the end.

The newly-formed St. Pancras Branch is wasting no time in making itself felt in an area until now barren of a working-class Political Party. A very convenient Meeting Room has been secured at the Fred Tallant Hall in Drummond Street, just off the Euston Road end of Hampstead Road, and a large hall has been booked there for a series of Winter Lectures to be held at 7.30 p.m. on the first Friday of each month. The first Lecture will be on Friday, October 1st, introducing the S.P.G.B. to St. Pancras. Well attended Outdoor Meetings have resulted from the Branch’s establishment of a Sunday evening Station at Islip Street, Kentish Town. Questions and discussion from the audience have shown the pressing need for Socialist Propaganda in this area of St. Pancras.

Edgware Branch’s debate with the I.W.W. on 12th August was attended by about 60 people; J. M. Hutchinson, putting the I.W.W.’s point of view gave a good indictment of the capitalist system, but in putting the I.W.W.’s case left the way open for Waters’ rebuttal for the party. Briefly, Hutchinson advocated that the workers should “organize and educate” themselves on a basis of class-consciousness for the purpose of “organizing their industry at the point of production and distribution.” The futility of the industrial unionism of the I.W.W. as an instrument for working class emancipation was amply explained by Waters who demonstrated the inseparability of the means from the end which the I.W.W. failed to face up to, and instanced another "non-political” trade-union that had concluded its activities by urging its members to join the Conservative Party! The activities favoured by the I.W.W. were shown by Waters to be abortive and disillusioning to workers, whose task of emancipation is political in character.

Kingston Branch commenced its outdoor meetings at "The Fountain,” New Malden, Surrey, on Saturday, September 18th. It is hoped that the weather will allow these meetings to be continued for six weeks, by which time a programme of indoor meetings will have been arranged and advertised to be held at the New Malden public library on Saturday evenings, commencing in November.

The meetings at Castle Street, Kingston, on Friday and Saturday evenings will continue until winter weather makes outdoor activities impossible. After September, speakers for the Friday evening meetings will be drawn exclusively from the branch.

In co-operation with Ealing Branch, a coach outing has been arranged for October 3rd to Southsea. Thirty-three members and friends of both branches, including four or five speakers, will journey to Southsea and hold a continuous afternoon and evening meeting on or near, the Marine Parade. Members living on the south coast within travelling distance of Southsea have been invited to join the party at the meeting place.

Door to door canvassing with a distribution of literature in the Twickenham district was conducted by two members of the branch during the early months of the year and resulted in collections for branch funds totalling £7 18s. 5d. This averages 5s. per hour of canvassing from each of the two members.

The Overseas Secretary reports that the response to his appeal for assistants to help with the overseas correspondence has been far beyond his expectations. The number of volunteers exceeds the amount of work to be done. As the amount of overseas correspondence increases a job will be found for everyone who has offered to help.

To the request that branches send in the overseas addresses of ex-members who have gone abroad, the response has not been so good. Where such an address is passed to the overseas department an attempt is made to link up the ex-member with comrades who may reside near and to keep in touch with him as well.

When the "Racial Problem” pamphlet first appeared a number of copies were sent to native trade unions, newspapers and journals, and to individuals in Africa, India, America, Ceylon, Malaya and British West Indies. A few encouraging replies have been received. Here are extracts from one or two such replies:

From Trinidad: ". . . [it] is a masterpiece. Since reading same I have lent it to no fewer than twenty- five persons . . . I am now beginning to know the why and the answer to many problems. I would really like a catalogue of Socialist works . . .”

From the Gold Coast: ". . . I hope to review [The Racial Problem] as soon as the present censorship of the Gold Coast Press is lifted. I am keenly interested in Socialism, personally, and would be most grateful for any literature on the subject that you could forward to me.”

From Madras: "Please be good.enough to send regularly every month a copy of your monthly 'The Socialist Standard’.”

There are other similar letters.

From the All-India Trade Union Congress we learn that " . . . in the last week in March, office bearers and organisers of a very large number of affiliated unions of the AITUC all over the country were arrested and detained without trial, and warrants were issued against many others, on the ground that they were Communists.” They tell us that offices were sealed and registers and papers were confiscated. From Assam we learn that "In the course of the last month [June] more Trade Unionists have been put behind the prison bars in Assam than even within a year of the worst days of direct British rule.”

The Dublin Socialist Group hope to have their Economics class started sometime during October. Their attempts to get the S.S. and the W.S. in the Dublin libraries have met with no success. "The ordinary channels just don’t exist as far as we are concerned . . . in other words, the bar is up to us.”

The new pamphlet on Russia, to be published by the Socialist Party of Canada, went to the printers in August.

The Johannesburg paper formerly known as Europe To-Morrow is now entitled Socialist Forum. This paper comprises, in the main, a selection of articles from “left” European journals. We thank the Comrades in Rhodesia for their recent generous donations to our party funds.

To readers of the Socialist Standard in all parts of the world. There may possibly be another reader of the S.S. residing near you. There are some parts of the world, very remote from Great Britain, where we have more than one subscriber or contact. If such readers would like to be put in contact with one another it will be arranged when they write to Overseas Secretary.

W. Waters.

Letter: The Socialist Party and Reforms (1948)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Answer to a Correspondent

H. Timmins (South Tottenham).—Your letter of 1st September received. As we find that it covers almost exactly the same ground and uses (and fails to understand) the same quotations as the letter from you that we published and replied to at length in the issue for October, 1933, we are not prepared to publish it again. We refer you to that reply and suggest that you try to make up your mind what is the precise nature of the charge of alleged inconsistency you wish to make. In brief it is correct, as you know, that the Party’s Declaration of Principles has never been changed. From time to time the Party has discussed the application of Socialist principles to particular issues and did so about 1910 on the question of reforms. The attitude defined then has never been altered and was reaffirmed at Conference this year. There is no inconsistency whatever in being opposed to having a programme of reforms, opposed to reformist parties and opposed to the policy of appealing to the capitalists for reforms, and at the same time being prepared to obtain anything that can be obtained by opposition to the capitalist class both on the economic and political fields. If you could show us that we have ever advocated the former or departed from the latter there would be a case to answer, not otherwise.

In your letter of October, 1933, you charged Marx with advocating the policy of appealing to the capitalists for reforms. You do so again and now you also say that in that issue of the Socialist Standard we published “the glaring statement that 'Marx welcomed reforms'." You seem to be confusing your own argument with our repudiation of it and you were quite right to say in your present letter that no doubt we would accuse you “ of just using small extracts,” except that the term should be not even using but “misquoting.”

You say, for example, that we wrote “Marx welcomed reforms.” What we actually did write, as yon will see if yon look it up, was:

  “Marx welcomed such reforms as the shorter working day and valued them highly (probably more highly than they deserved). But he never advocated the useless policy of appealing to the capitalists for such reforms.”

You make one new point: “In view of the recent new Health Insurance Act, it brings to the fore the question of Reforms, of which even members of your Party will receive some benefits in different ways.”

You have overlooked the fact that the new Scheme is partly financed by deductions from wages (incidentally a reversal of the early Labour Party policy); that it is introduced at a time when prices are rising faster than wages and in place of wage increases; that some workers, e.g. new entrants to the Civil Service, will now have deductions made from wages for old age pensions but will have the pensions deducted from the Civil Service pension they would get in any event; and that the scheme as a whole is so far from being attractive that hundreds of thousands of people refused to enter it and the threat of prosecution had to be made to force them to do so.

Ed. Comm.

Food for Thought (1948)

From the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

During his directorship of the United Nations' Food and Agriculturist Organisation Sir John Boyd Orr won the approval of many people for his work in organising the supply or food to the devastated countries of Europe. Since his retirement from that post he has been tackling the problem of food production for all the peoples of the world. His approach is the direct one; his ideals mere wishful thinking, because conflicting interests in capitalist society, national and international, permit of no direct methods for the provision of a full life for all. 

Among many other things he said (Daily Herald, 29/7/48):

A world of peace and friendship, a world with the plenty which modern science had made possible was a great ideal. But those in power had no patience with such an ideal. They said it was not practical politics.

Within the structure of capitalism it is possible that the politicians are right. Inside the nation a capitalist is guaranteed protection while accumulating wealth by exploitation, providing he observes the rules of the game. Between nations the case is different. The right to trade, to colonise, and to have access to raw materials and natural resources outside their own boundaries must be wangled, bluffed or taken by force of arms. A nation having taken possession can only hold its gains by superior strength. Consequently it is futile to suggest, as Sir John does that: 

If half the effort being spent making tanks, guns. aeroplanes or atomic bombs was diverted to producing the primary necessities of life, gross poverty would be eliminated for the world within the lifetime of our children.

For each nation to cut its fighting forces by half, to convince the governments of all nations of such a necessity, while each is suspicious of its neighbours and scheming to over-reach them, such an idea is, to say the least, laughable. Moreover, Sir John only suggests a reduction in armed strength—or equipment—by half. Even he could hardly visualise capitalism being run without armed forces to deal with dissatisfied sections of the workers from time to time. 

Next Sir John says: 

A world government may evolve from the United Nations' Food, Economic, Financial and other organisations.

But he gives no hint as to which nation will be at the head. Nor does he show how the differences between nations can be reconciled to bring about collaboration in a common policy that would be of lasting benefit to the workers. He says: "Politics was but the shadow of economics" but overlooks the fact that all the power is in political control of armed force. Those who control the political machinery of any nation make the laws designed to regulate production and exchange; and by tariffs, taxes and subsidies encourage or hinder trade in the various industries according to the interests they represent. 

In one of his broadcasts Sir John suggested that the agriculturists and food producers of the world should get together and tackle the problem of world food production by mutual agreement, on the principle that they are the actual people concerned with the production of these commodities. But the very fact that these people are concerned with commodity production makes them suspect. In the past such collaboration between the captains of industry has invariably resulted in limitation, or restriction of output in order to control prices in their own interests. Rings and combines are just as common among agriculturists as other interests. They are not philanthropists but capitalists, in business to make profits. They hold the community to ransom whenever their products fall behind demand. In the past they burned millions of tons of wheat and coffee. Even since the war vegetables have been ploughed back into the soil, fruit has been allowed to rot, and hundreds of tons of fish thrown back into the sea or sold as manure to keep up prices. 

But Sir John still has hopes, in spite of the callous indifference to the needs of the people that is so prominent a feature in the normal life of those with guaranteed incomes derived from industrial enterprise, or to be exact, exploitation. He says: 

These United Nations' organisations throw a light along the road to world peace and plenty . . .  Have we the common sense, the decency, the moral purpose to follow the light? 

Unfortunately these qualities have little or nothing to do with the question. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and Sir John hasn't even mapped out a road to his Utopia; while facing him is the inexorable machinery of capitalist finance and power-politics, blind and deaf to common-sense appeals, in their lust for power. 

Then:

If the decision lay with the people, he had no doubt what the answer would be. Where they had not been too bedevilled to think for themselves, they all wanted the things the organisation stood for. 

To bedevil means to confuse, and the vast majority of the workers are in a hopeless muddle of confused thinking on political and economic questions. The class that appropriates the major portion of the wealth produced, without contributing towards its production, must be deeply interested in obscuring the method by which it is achieved. The majority of capitalists are, no doubt, quite ignorant of the scientific explanation of surplus value. Yet they all know that the system in some way guarantees them wealth and privilege without effort on their part. Consequently they welcome any theory that keeps clear of this fact, and encourage any shallow, but plausible ideas that only deal with day-to-day occurrences on the surface of capitalist events, This flood of bedevilment is a free-for-all. Politicians, economists and journalists all take a hand, many of them finding it pays extremely well; especially the politicians. The so-called Labour, Fabian and Communist parties are responsible for much of the confusion.

Next Sir John says: 

The carrying out of a world food plan alone would bring a great expansion of world industry and trade such as occurred in the 19th century. 

That possibility should certainly gain capitalist support for Sir John, because the more work there is for the workers, the greater the amount of surplus value from which capitalist incomes are derived, while the workers still only get wages that barely cover their cost of living. But Sir John overlooks one important factor. During the 19th century Britain had a flying start in the race for markets. Today every capitalist country is in the race, and the share of each will diminish with the ever-increasing fierceness of the international race for markets. 

"If food production could not be doubled in the next 25 years," warned Sir John, "we were heading for disaster." Due presumably, to the estimated enormous increase in the world's population on top of tbe present food shortage. We are not told the nature of the disaster that threatens, but unlike Malthus, who visualised the time when there would only be standing room on the earth, Sir John reveals the forces already operating to avert the disaster—whatever it is—when he says: 

Of every three families in the world today, two suffered premature death for lack of adequate food and shelter. 

Sir John may hope that a world government might set a limit to the process. But such a government, especially by agreement, is just a dream, while world government by conquest is a nightmare even to the capitalist and his political stooges. 

Next he says: 

The first right of man was food and shelter to maintain life. The masses today demanded this. And they would get it because they were in a vast majority.

Not merely because they are in a majority, nor because they demand them, will they get these things. They have first to understand why they lack them now. At present the workers, between them, possess all the scientific and technical knowledge, and actually carry out all the work of production and distribution. Their failure to satisfy the needs of all is due to the incubus of trade, commerce and finance; the capitalist machinery of appropriation, that limits production to what the market can absorb. The workers must get rid of this incubus. To do so they must organise politically as a class, in opposition to all parties which maintain the present system. Only when they control the political machinery through their delegates, pledged to carry out the wishes of the workers, will they be enabled to control production and distribution in accordance with their needs. 

One of the greatest obstacles to a clear understanding of their position by the workers, is the bedevilment, or confusion, much of it considered and deliberate, referred to by Sir John Boyd Orr. However laudable his ideals and aspirations his assumption that they can be realised by a world government of capitalists is a false and dangerous fallacy. It is the working-class that suffers under capitalism, and it is only by the conscious and organised efforts of that class that emancipation can be achieved.

F. Foan